Responding to the Challenges of Gendered Career Aspirations 113stereotype of women being seen as less competent than their male
counterparts in these areas, it may have led to “girls being less confident
than boys in their general intellectual abilities and to have lower
expectations for success at difficult academic and vocational activities.”
(2012: 160) Against this stereotypical backdrop, girls may be even less
inclined to choose such subjects, particularly if they do not find them
especially interesting and important (Obura and Ajawi 2012:160).
However, over the years there has been an increasing interested
amongst girls in school in the subjects of science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics, which is confirmed by the growing
numbers of women (i) registering for STEM disciplines in, and (ii)
graduating from universities in these disciplines. Hill et al agree but
raise the nagging concern that notwithstanding the growing numbers,
there still remains a pattern amongst female school-leavers of
diminishing interest from high school to graduation. They note
specifically that in high school, as many women as men show an interest
in pursuing science and engineering programmes at university, yet fewer
women actually do so (2010:xiv) and, similar to other studies, they
identified that the disparity becomes greater when the biological
sciences are not included (2010:7). Their findings are that, by
graduation, the numbers of men completing the qualification outstrips
women in almost every science, engineering, physics and computer
science programme. The representation of women in science and
engineering drops even further in the transition to the workplace and
they confirm that men continue to outnumber them especially at the
upper levels of the profession. (Hill et al 2010: xiv; 9-11; 18-19)
Margolis and Fisher (2006) looked particularly at computer science
as a career choice, and found that the image of the “the computer geek” -
whose only interest is the computer - is particularly damaging to women
“who, instead of the singular obsessive interest in computing that is
common to men, require a balance of multiple interests” (2006:6).